Samsung Series 7 Gaming Performance

There’s no craziness this time with CPU/GPU throttling under typical gaming workloads, but we did run into some driver anomalies. Samsung ships the Series 7 with a rather old 296.87 driver version, and while performance in most games is fine, Civilization V in particular has very poor performance. Unfortunately, the only other drivers that will properly install right now are the 304.79 beta drivers, and those don’t bring Civ5 performance back to the level that we saw with the Clevo W110ER. Other than that one title, performance in the other games was pretty close between the two drivers, so we’ve used the 296.87 scores for the remaining titles.

Value Gaming Performance

Batman: Arkham City - Value

Battlefield 3 - Value

Civilization V - Value

DiRT 3 - Value

Elder Scrolls: Skyrim - Value

Portal 2 - Value

Total War: Shogun 2 - Value

As we’ve seen with quite a few laptops, the launch of Kepler GPUs has made our Value settings less of a struggle. Outside of the Civ5 issue, Samsung’s Series 7 is able to pass 60FPS in all of the titles, though it’s interesting that the Clevo W110ER still takes a few wins—again, most likely thanks to using different drivers. As a higher end “mainstream” notebook, we’d be more surprised if there were problems with our Value settings, so let’s just move along and bump up the difficulty a notch.

Mainstream Gaming Performance

Batman: Arkham City - Mainstream

Battlefield 3 - Mainstream

Civilization V - Mainstream

DiRT 3 - Mainstream

Elder Scrolls: Skyrim - Mainstream

Portal 2 - Mainstream

Total War: Shogun 2 - Mainstream

Again with the exception of Civ5 (look at the W110ER to get a rough idea of where the Samsung should be performing), Samsung takes down all of our mainstream gaming tests without any difficulties to speak of. Battlefield 3 is the only game where you might see occasional sub-30 frame rates in multiplayer matches, but that’s no surprise as it’s the most demanding title in our current test suite—and at least you can drop to Medium detail to get a substantial improvement.

Samsung Series 7 Gaming
Recommended Settings for 1920x1080
Game Detail FPS Notes
Batman: Arkham City Very High + PhysX 31 As one of the few titles where PhysX makes a noticeable difference, we recommend using it rather than enabling DX11.
Battlefield 3 Medium 37.9 Multiplayer might be pushing it at these settings, in which case you may need to drop the resolution.
Civilization V Low 31.9 Civ5 needs a better driver, and we’ve seen
higher scores in the past. Until then, setting
everything to “Low” is your best bet for 1080p.
DiRT 3 High + 4xAA 52.9 Very fluid at the High defaults with 4xAA. If you
try Ultra without AA, you’ll be around 32FPS.
Portal 2 Max + 4xAA 66.5 You can pretty much max out the settings in
Portal 2 and still maintain fluid frame rates; even 8xAA or 16xCSAA will run fine.
Skyrim Ultra + 4xAA 39.4 There are no issues with maxing out the settings in Skyrim—you can even use 8xAA if you feel the need at the cost of a few FPS.
Total War: Shogun 2 Very High + 4xAA 35.0 The Very High defaults with 4xAA are again very playable; if you run into performance issues, turn off AA to get another 5-10 FPS.

With the GT 650M, we’re almost at the point where we can just recommend using our Enthusiast settings across all the tested games—almost, but not quite. Batman, Battlefield, Civilization, and DiRT all fall below 30 FPS at our Enthusiast (max detail + 4xAA) settings and require backing off just a bit. As noted in the table, we prefer enabling PhysX in Batman over running with DX11—you’ll need some form of GTX GPU at the very least to enable both without dropping into the 20s. Battlefield remains a GPU killer and needs a lot more than a GT 650M to handle 1080p at higher quality settings. Civilization still needs a better driver, and DiRT need to step back from the Ultra settings to High (which basically doubles the frame rates).

Obviously, we’re not testing a huge number of games, but the above results should hold for most other titles as well. More demanding titles will need to run at Medium to High detail settings at 1080p, while older and/or less demanding games (like Diablo III) can easily be run at maximum detail with 4xAA. Short of games taking another jump forward in requirements—something we really haven’t seen since DX11 titles started shipping—the GT 650M ought to remain adequate for gaming for a couple years at least (but don’t quote me one that).

Samsung Series 7 General Performance Samsung Series 7 Battery Life
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  • nerd1 - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link

    Exactly WHAT problems? I own 13" MBA and my friend has series 9 2011 model and I think s9 is better in almost all aspects.
  • bennyg - Saturday, August 18, 2012 - link

    Where are the comparison with the 95% AUO 1080p TN screens used in Clevo's high end gaming laptops
    B156HW01 v4, v7
    and the ones used in 17"

    Very ironic how AUO and Chimei are responsible for so many cheap crappy low res screens now they're the only ones turning out top notch high res TNs!
  • rwei - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link

    (1) EVEN MORE SHALLOW KEY TRAVEL!!!
    http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/20/synaptics-enter...

    (2) Clickpads with NO BUTTONS AT ALL!!!
    http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/20/synaptics-force...

    Gonna be some good-@$$ rants coming up in the near future. Bet you're loving Synaptics today.
  • jsa - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - link

    My 2004 Dell Inspiron 8600 just can't keep up with some fairly basic tasks, so I've been following reviews here (and elsewhere to supplement--wish there were more here!) for the past few months to try to decide on a new machine. The Asus N56V is currently my top contender after being disappointed with the findings in the last couple of reviews.

    One thing I haven't gotten straight in my head is whether there is some benefit to having the discrete GPU for a nongamer (or occasional gamer at most) such as myself. I understand there may be some battery life disadvantages to having it; are there also some benefits I might reap? Perhaps the whole question is moot as I haven't really seen any interesting options for use as a main computer (not quite ready to relegate the optical drive to my secondary machine), that are limited to integrated graphics.

    One thing that seems important to me is having good sound, as I'd like to move around the house and, if I'm going to stay put for a while, listen to music from the notebook without dealing with external speakers; another is a high resolution display, because I like to fit a lot on that screen. The main other contenders seem to be the Series 7 reviewed here, which has a much nicer case and maybe better sound and keyboard, but not as good a screen, much more expensive, and some disappointments in the review; the HP Pavilion dv6, which also seems to have better sound than the N56V, but seems like it may have quality control issues (as well as a glossy screen); the Lenovo Y580, which I don't know much about, but doesn't seem quite as appealing as the N56V; and the Sony Vaio S 15", which generally seems like a good machine, but doesn't seem to have very good sound at all.

    Apologies if this isn't appropriate as a comment.
  • infoilrator - Friday, August 24, 2012 - link

    The greatest difficulty is to extend performance, size, cost, and battery life.
    With speakers more sound is easier with larger speakers. Some of the USB plug ins do pretty well. Being small, light, and power efficient is a contradiction. Piezo tweeters can be loud and efficent if you sacrifice bass. There are dome speakers thar do better, these get expensive fast. Cone speakers are a possible answer, require space and magnets.
    Possibly someone makes cordless USB headphones for you, a possible answer.

    Every laptop is a marketing/price compromise.

    Recently SSD prices have dropped. Please remember lead time in choosing components for mass production. You can have "just in time delivery" but prices and choices can reflect over a year back. Or more. Contracts have to e signed so assembly lines are not idle for want of parts

    If prices of HDDs and SSDs continue to fall expect this first to appear with smaller producers.
  • infoilrator - Friday, August 24, 2012 - link

    Around the house maybe a wireless connection to an existing sound system?
  • jsa - Sunday, August 26, 2012 - link

    Thanks for all your insights. I don't have an existing sound system, but it may be worth getting rid of the "good sound" requirement, since I won't get great sound, anyway. Then I can either implement a wireless system of some kind or check out USB speakers. (Cordless USB headphones are a pretty interesting option, but don't work when my girlfriend is over.)

    That opens up my options, and in particular makes the Vaio S 15.5" a more attractive choice.

    As someone who wouldn't be playing games much (if ever), is there a strong benefit to losing the dedicated GPU, or is it pretty much a draw?
  • jemccloskey - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link

    Sorry if I'm posting and this thread is already dead. I have a Samsung Series 7 17" - NP700Z7C-S01US and I am unable to frame rates even close to those mentioned in the benchmark results. I get frame rates between 8-12 @ 1366x768 on Batman Arkham City, Battlefield 3, Fallout: New Vegas. DX11 on and off etc..

    This is with drivers ranging from 296.87 through all betas and the current released version 306.97. In addition, I have tried every configuration and I have specified to use the nVidia discrete graphics: via context menu, Physx config, and 3D Settings. However, I am unable to pass the 12 fps threshhold. In addition I have installed, the latest BIOS update, Windows7(64bit ultimate and pro) 3 different times, and used Nivdia Optimus GPU Tools state viewer, GPU-Z and Throttlestop 500a.

    Just to sum things up: I get better fps average results from using the Intel IGP HD Graphics 4000. And I'm not confusing the nvidia with the intel when profiling. Verified harware ID's, throughput and bandwidth via 3 different utilities.

    I have played with all power management issues etc...In any case, I'm totally confused as to how to achieve the frame rates mentioned in your benchmarks. I must be doing something wrong. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

    Thank you,
    jmccloskey@gmail.com
  • FlavioJuan - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link

    I have bought this great Computer a week ago.

    The GOOD ones
    It has a good design is lightweight (4 a 17" Laptop)
    Aluminum design is also great looking
    Battery last almost the 6 promoted hours,
    Bright is OK
    Multi touch pad works fine.
    Sound is also OK.
    Great Battery life extender feature in BIOS.

    The BAD ones

    For this kind of “high range” computer, I really do not understand why max RAM was designed up to 8Gb.

    Battery is not removable (not even a switch to turn it off).

    Boot from Pen drive not available in BIOS boot options.

    No Blue ray reader.

    No button to eject discs from reader, you can eject disc only from windows. (Not even an eject hole) so if you don’t have Windows running… there is no way to take a disc out.

    A lot of Samsung proprietary software must be loaded to get this machine full working,

    Several features are software dependent, like for example, keyboard backlight, controlled by Fn + F9 F10, so u have to wait till complete windows + driver properly loaded, to have this feature available.

    If you are on a non-dark environment then every time you wish the keyboard backlight ON, you will receive a warning telling you that you can just turn in ON only in dark environment.
    (In the other hand I tried to disable Light sensor from control Panel >Sensor but it didn’t works. So the solution I have found for this issue was covering the sensor with a coin or piece of tape. Really amazing!)

    But what I really hate, (and this seems not only belongs to Samsung laptops, but for most of suppliers) is all the garbage software pre-installed on a new machine.
    I buy a new laptop every year, and all I wish is a CLEAN computer installed just with SO + DRV.
    I spent almost a day cleaning it in order to get the machine working without all these pre-installed software. Because in this process, sometimes uninstall some vital soft, and as
    Re-installing doesn’t works properly, the only solution is perform a complete recovery then start again with the task.

    I would prefer my windows 7 working at full range just with my applications instead to waste resources with all the Samsung resident softs that degrades my machine's performance.
    But this kind of practice seems to be normal for all the laptop suppliers.
    Could we (the customers) do something to change it?

    Model NP700Z7C-S03US
    SN / HUY691DC800028
    Purchased on oct 30 2012 Tiger direct Miami, FL

    Best regards for everybody.
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    https://laptopbattery.ae/samsung.html

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